


In every universe

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:32:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7441117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Intaglio work as a mental break from Actual Serious Writing. All drawn from or inspired by or (often, necessarily) de-Americanised from the “Awful AUs” Tumblr and similar prompt collections. Sporadic, desultory, and really no more than scales and exercises as a relief from chipping away at t’ book-face … and mixing metaphors.</p>
<p>For those who actually follow that Actual Serious Writing, and specially for those involved in its fruition, be assured that this has not delayed that. (Delays are owing to referenda on the line.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hit for six

* * *

He’d been resistant to the idea. The Home Counties.... He’d feared he’d be too cut off from his roots, and wither, and die. (He was glad he’d kept his own suite of rooms in the whacking great house he’d bought his family; and went up to Wetherby – well: Boston Spa – regularly to recharge.) Yet being so near to London: its vibrancy quite as much as its recording studios and The Business: had worked out rather well. This bit of leafy Surrey, in a village surrounded by an SSSI, was not his own North Countree (and, upon Surrey’s heaths, you weren’t committing suicide by going out upon a moor without a hat), but it was a fine, fair country all the same. And he’d taken to it, drawing his house – Jacobean in its earliest origins, and with a fair few acres buffering him from the world – about him like a cloak.

The buffer was wanted. He didn’t mind church bells. There was little traffic noise. And, truth be told, the wind in the boughs and leaves of rowan, oak, and silver birch, the song of Dartford warbler, of nightjar, and of the silver-singing skylark rising from scrubby heather on sandy heaths, likely merited an acknowledgement in the liner notes of his next single (although the entire fandom and the whole of the RnB world should gawp bewildered if he sneaked it in. Mind, the Glasto crowd and the RSPB should celebrate him if he did do...). Even the deer in the wood and on the heathlands, and the rolling badger, were welcome neighbours.

The human neighbours were … not unwelcome, of course: he wasn’t a misanthrope, no matter what Tommo said; but, all the same.... _As_ neighbours, they were splendid people (although, as Tommo acidly pointed out, Fooking Tories To A Man), both the villagers and – surprisingly, and surreptitiously – a goodish number of those other, well, he hated to say it, those _other_ slebs, his fellow moneyed incomers. But he couldn’t work to the sounds of the nearby golf course (let alone be near enough to have stray balls, foozled, forever shattering his windows); and he dared not be too near the village green. Village fêtes, with all the attendant excitements of tombola and jumbles, were distracting enough, and difficult to resist; and when, as now, Summer was upon the land.... Well. And he knew if he were within earshot of a village match, he’d not be able _not_ to down tools and go and watch the cricket, although he was hopeless at playing it.

As was all too typical, his sleep schedule was seriously bollocksed. He’d been up all hours with a beat, wrestling with lyrics. Now, when _normal_ folk were working by day (or not: was today Friday? Or was it Saturday? He neither knew nor cared), Zayn was making chapli kebab to go with some reheated mutton biryani. For _breakfast._ At two in the afternoon.

It wasn’t of course as good as was his mum’s, let alone his several aunts’, who’d taught his mum: such things never are. But his mum and his aunts had made damned certain – regardless of what he’d wanted at the time, a stroppy, spotty youth – he could fend for himself in a kitchen when once he was out from under their overshadowing and sometimes overbearing care. And though he was no great gardener, nor very green-handed, he’d learnt to grow his own spices as well, and some veg., in his attached conservatory: village shops don’t always have the right or best cardamom and mint leaves. Let alone _proper_ brinjal for baingan dishes and sides. Those also he grew in his greenhouse-conservatory.

From which he was now hearing an almighty crash, and the tinkle of glass.

Securing his cookery so nothing burnt or flared up, he dashed to the door to the conservatory. Yes. A broken pane. And glass all over: not, thankfully, in a radius encompassing anything growing; but his tools and such should want careful handling lest he nick himself on unseen shards hereafter. And almost yet rolling, the material culprit.

It was not, as he’d first expected, a golf ball.

He could hear someone at the door, and, not bothering to conceal a certain exasperation – no more: in country districts, one must get on with one’s neighbours –, went to answer it.

The boy was, perhaps, twelve, which was startling: it was impossible that the ball came from the green, at this distance, but equally unlikely it had come from the largish house and grounds adjacent, the new occupants of which he’d not yet met; it was impossible that a lad of twelve had hit it from anywhere not on Zayn’s own inviolate property.

The lad’s eyes widened in horrified recognition.

‘Oh, _no._ I’m. Sorry. We’re all _very_ sorry, we apologise, my cousin hit it –.’

The lad was clearly in a right state. Zayn melted, just a bit. Besides, this was neither a village lad nor a sprig of the Home Counties. Not a Northerner, let alone a Yorkshire Tyke, but – a Midlander, perhaps, by his speech; not Brummie, but near enough, and not, which immediately enlisted Zayn’s sympathy and calmed his annoyance, posh.

‘And sent you to face it up?’

‘No! No, he’ll be here any moment, really. We didn’t expect it to go quite _this_ far beyond the boundary.’

Zayn felt his jaw drop. ‘It was hit from the next house over?’

‘Mm. Yes. Sir.’

‘Your cousin … your cousin hit it all the way to my greenhouse.’ Incredible; even if the cousin were sixteen or seventeen. ‘Who _is_ he, then: the youth version of Beefy or Freddie? He wants to play for _England_.’

‘Er. Well,’ said a new voice, an adult voice of about Zayn’s own age, and emanating from a man of Zayn’s own age (and a damned fit one, too) just coming around the hedge. ‘I. Er. _Do,_ actually.’

Zayn’s jaw hadn’t had this amount of working wide since … well, that was not a train of thought he wanted to follow, gawping at the incredibly gorgeous man now addressing him.

‘Sorry,’ said the newcomer; ‘stopped to grab me wallet.’ He held it up (£400 at Turnbull & Asser, or Zayn missed his guess) so as to prove his good intentions. ‘I was afraid I’d done some damage. M’ name’s Liam –.’

‘Liam Payne,’ breathed Zayn. ‘I _know,_ mate. Vice-captain of Warks and England Test cricketer. That explains why a six from next door went through me green-house. I’m –’

‘– m’ favourite recording artist,’ said Liam, blushing slightly, and putting his hand to the back of his neck. Zayn blushed in reciprocation: partly at the compliment, and partly because he couldn’t leave off staring at what Liam’s gesture did to the man’s arm.

‘So,’ said Liam, looking down, shyly. ‘Not the way I’d have wished to do it, but: Hullo, I’m your new neighbour … part of the year, anyroadup. This is me cousin Kev. Er. How much damage did we do to your panes?’

Zayn, trying desperately neither to drool nor to make a ‘Payne’ pun, displaced those reactions. ‘I’d say _you_ did the damage, mate. Leave Kev out of this.’

Liam grinned, eyes and Adorable Little Nose crinkling. (And when and how soon, wondered Zayn, had he christened Liam’s nose as being ‘adorable’? And been seized with the overmastering desire to kiss it?) ‘Kev was the one bowled it,’ said Liam, ruffling his young cousin’s hair. ‘You try and tell lads these days, “line and length,” and you’re wasting your breath.’

A sniff came from Kev, and Liam and Zayn both came to themselves with a start. ‘Kev,’ said Liam, all tender concern.

‘I’m not _blubbing_ like a babby,’ said Kev, indignantly. ‘I smell cooking.’

Zayn startled. ‘Oh, f- – bug- – I mean, come in, do, I’ve sommat on Aga, I didn’t mean to keep us all standing here –’

‘You look that out,’ said Liam, ‘and then show us the damage.’

‘Right. Yes. Come in.’

* * *

An hour after, the rest of the visiting Paynes and their cousinage tramped over, with some concern (not unmixed with hilarity), to find what could be keeping Liam and Kev.

What had kept them was food, in the first instance. And, in the second, Liam’s insistence that he, alone, not Kev and assuredly not Zayn, collect all the broken glass. When Zayn, rather red in the face, ushered in Liam’s extended family (Roo and Nic smirking openly, Karen’s eyes twinkling, cousins gawping, and Geoff grinning in his moustaches), Liam was measuring the panes and clearly bent on replacing the broken glass himself. ‘He’s a lad of parts,’ said Geoff, proudly, to Zayn; ‘right good with his hands, ’ll make a proper job of it’: at which Zayn went very red, as Liam’s sisters (and, worse yet, his mum) went off like exploding bottles of ginger beer.

* * *

As it happened, Geoff had been right: in the sense he’d intended. The morning after, armed with torch, solder, putty, and glass, and tools to match, Liam had been at Zayn’s door at the ungodly hour of 9.0. And Zayn had not even managed to grumble amidst his yawns. By lunchtime, when Zayn insisted Liam stop and eat with him, Liam had reorganised the conservatory tools, sharpened a pair of secateurs, moved great sacks of plant food to a better place for them, and identified three more panes which wanted replacing.

Throughout the next fortnight, seizing what time he could, before the season’s fixtures, and the training prior, rapt him altogether away, Liam was ’round Zayn’s daily. They’d fallen into a pattern: luncheon, and small repairs. And dinner, now his family had gone, back to the adjacent houses Liam had bought them and himself near Wombourne, within easy reach of Edgbaston. And by the third dinner … well. Geoff had been right in the sense he’d not intended. Liam was a lad of parts (and all of them in excellent working order, as Zayn had diligently tested), and good with his hands, and made a proper job of all he undertook.

‘Love?’ Liam was still, yet sheathed in a pliant Zayn, both of them satiate and sleepy. ‘D’ you.... I go up tomorrow to Brum. I know you’re busy, but. First match of the season’s the MCC University Match, at Edgbaston: us against, well, Leeds / Bradford MCCU, at Edgbaston. Could you get away?’

Zayn pulled him, impossibly, closer. ‘I’ll _make_ time, Leeyum. For you, I’ll always make time.’

Liam sighed happily into Zayn’s hair. ‘And, called up for England … it’s all Home Tests this year, so, Lord’s, and the Oval....’

‘Babe. Except for promo, and touring next year, I’m. I really am all _yours._ And you can ring Norman Tebbit and tell him: even when England are playing Pakistan, babe, I’ll be there, in the midst of the Barmy Army, cheering you on and singing “Jerusalem” into the bargain.’ He paused, and squirmed, deliciously. ‘Is – is this seriously getting you _hard_ again?’

Liam grinned. Wickedly.

* * *

Even being who they were, they were never able to get planning permission to grub out the hedgerow that marked the bounds and separated the House With The Conservatory from The House With Its Own Cricket Pitch. Not even years on, when Kev was the nippiest England bowler in decades.

But it hardly mattered. Zayn always managed to tour Australia when Liam and England were fighting to retain The Ashes there, and be in England when Australia were the tourists, and otherwise accommodate their schedules; and when, after retiring, Liam joined TMS as a summariser, it always happened that Zayn’s concerts were near whatever fixture, Home or Abroad, was on. And though concerts may be cancelled for wild weather, or matches abandoned, for the two of them through whatever storms and years, neither rain nor light stopped play.

And, as Zayn, even in sere age, liked to say, in intervals of dozing in a Bath chair beside Liam’s, it all began with a cricket ball, a broken pane, and (here Liam always groaned) a Payne who never broke.

* * *

END

* * *

 

 


	2. Pyx and Touchstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loosely based on mixing the ‘I know why I know how heists work, but why do you’ and the ‘We were both minding our own business at the bank but now it’s getting robbed’ prompts … shaken, not stirred.

* * *

The gobby, titchy Tyke with the blue eyes and blue-riband bum was – although from Donny or Sheffield by the sound of him – down for the day from London. The evident Sheffield-cum-Doncaster West Riding upbringing might have suggested he was connected with the Sheffield Assay Office. The return ticket to Marylebone from Birmingham Snow Hill, the nearest station to the Jewellery Quarter, negatived that. And the sarky little bugger himself tended, a trifle too often, to point out, in his fullest Professional Yorkshireman persona, that he worked for Fattorini owing to its being ‘near as Ah could coom to having me hands on t’ FA Cup’.

Zain had an eye on him all the same.

If his fellow Yorkshireman were down from the Minories, the tall, wild-maned, dimpled young man he was with was unquestionably calling here from Fattorini’s Regent Street Works; and was equally obviously recently promoted there from Urmston in Manchester. It was, thought Zain, fairly clear that the curly faun was, as his maddeningly slow speech betrayed, a grammar-school lad from some dormitory town on the fringes, at least, of WAG country: one almost certainly in leafy Cheshire; and socially a cut above the lad from Doncaster. Although they seemed to get on rather markedly well, the two of them, even for two young men who shared an employer.

Then there was the Irishman with the improbable hair. A cheery bugger, and no doubt a bit-of-a-lad; indeed, quite probably described in his home country as ‘a divil of a lad’ and ‘a broth of a bhoy’ … begorrah. And, suspected Zain, darkly, as synthetic as those locutions: the Irishman clearly possessed an unfair quantity of Irish charm, and equally clearly was playing up to it at the top of his bent with this Plastic Paddy turn he was putting across.

The one he was watching most nearly, all the same (for purely professional reasons, he assured himself, to his own disbelief) was the incredibly fit, sporty, puppy-faced fellow with an accent not a million miles from Brummie, a sort of West Midlands Becks. The contradictions of disposition and evident, if latent, force and dangerousness, made him formidable, judged Zain. And made him also, considered Zain, wholly out of place here at 1 Moreton Street, the Birmingham Assay Office. If there were no evident reason for the Irishman’s presence here amidst the gemstones, jewellery, and precious metals – and Zain couldn’t think of an innocent reason –, the presence of Mr Muscles Goodcheer was all the more anomalous. An evident ’Ard Man who skipped through life with the innocent joy of an eight-year-old set loose in a sweet shop could mean a number of things, and few of them good; when, as here, as _now,_ Zain did not know him to be, trebly assured and with an ironclad guaranty, on Zain’s side, he could mean nothing good at all, this dangerous anomaly.

And Zain had a professional distaste for such anomalies. The more so when a raid was imminent, as well he knew one was.

That, after all, was why he was here, blending in.

* * *

The heist. The long-planned heist. And the buggers were two – make that, _three,_ now – three minutes late, when timing was everything. Zain was a patient man; but he was patient through, _despite,_ his annoyance – which he concealed – and his exasperation with the unprofessional.

But there they were.

 _She_ was … well. If the Irishman’s hair were improbable, hers was impossible: a vivid lavender this time, worn with careful but wholly unsuitable _maquillage_ which made her look five years older than she looked without it. And she looked five years older than her age at the best of times and that with the light behind her: the hard, Tyneside face matching a voice like a metal-saw and an attitude to fit, a sort of trebly-distilled quintessence of Footballer’s WAG. A council estate – a _sink_ estate – bint given lashings of lolly, and for what consideration one could guess, as a sort of upmarket whore: on the one hand, the sort of Geordie bint no man in his senses’d want to get entangled with; on the other, just the sort who, once one were in her toils, should demand positively to _drip_ with jewels. Her presence was their entrée, and their excuse.

Because of course they were here for jewellery and gemstones, not for gold or silver, which were heavier, and more trouble to melt and recast even than gems were to recut and fence or smuggle. Recutting put paid, after all, to the micro-identifiers lasered onto the jewels.... No, silver and gold were not what had brought them here. Nor – though the curtain had gone up, just a trifle late, and the show had started, without Brucie as compère – were they here for the palladium.

And playing up to _her...._ Zain knew _him_ all right. He understood, did Zain, the method of it: posing as a rich young playboy besotted with Herself, and making doubly sure by playing off the unwillingness to offend, the slight hesitation – which was all it took – induced even in the rightly suspicious by his being, to all appearance, an Asian, and a Muslim at that; the wish not to seem to offend. It galled him all the same. It probably galled the ersatz ‘bodyguards’ or flunkies as well: Zain knew Ant and Danny of old. In fact, he’d recruited them for the job. The drunken (or so he’d have you believe) comic relief, Samuels, was none of his doing, any more than was Lucas.

It was the man himself, and _Herself,_ who, once inside, produced their weapons in the old way, and began the robbery in the old way. His appearance, after all, had been altered beyond recognition, and the amount of slap she’d laid on with a trowel meant her own mum – if the wicked old trout were minded to assist the plods, which she wasn’t – couldn’t have picked her out of an identity parade. The hostages were taken; the demands made; the cabinets stripped of their contents. Zain, the Irishman, the two Fattorini men, and the human Staffie, were herded together as bystanders of the purest innocence: which was a laugh. The high headman was just about to push them all into a strongroom when Zain nodded at Danny.

What happened next was in no one’s script. As Ant and Danny trained their own side-arms on Herself and the Boss, Samuels and Lucas trained theirs on the Riachs. The boss seized the opportunity afforded by this stand-off, not to say, utter cock-up, and grabbed at a female jeweller who was clearly petrified. At the same moment, Herself pulled a dainty but deadly-looking weapon from her little, beaded, intoxicated-looking bag. There were enough double-crosses, it seemed, to play noughts-and.

Worst of all, the cheeky, stroppy Tyke from Fattorni, observing the confusion and the up-tick in hostage-taking, muttered, ‘Oh, _that’s_ not on’: and cut the legs from under the boss with a move which should have got him a red card on any pitch in the country, and quite neatly knocked _her_ over like a pin, into the surprised, but swift, immobilising clutch of the Faun of Cheshire. The Irishman swore; and the Leonidas of the West Midlands sighed, wearily, and pulled out his own (Zain hated himself for the thought, and for giving way for a second he didn’t _have_ to the connotations) quite massive weapon.

Whereupon Zain perforce did the same.

‘Stand down,’ said the Midlands Apollo, to Samuels and Lucas. ‘I’ve George and Edwards covered.’

They obeyed him. Zain looked at Ant and Danny, and nodded. They kept their eyes on Herself and the boss-man, and their personal weapons in hand and ready.

The Midlander ignored them, and addressed himself to the Geordie woman and her companion: who were now no longer _Herself_ and _The Boss,_ but simply two bods, Chummy One and Chummy Two, and duly – it seemed – had off, knocked, for the attempted robbery. ‘You two –’ and here the Midlander flashed his brief, his warrant card, at them, so far as Zain, yet suspicious and unconvinced, could see – ‘are nicked. More formally ...’

The Irishman was grinning at Zain: but wolfishly, now. Zain realised, with a start, that the only expression he less wished to see on the Irishman’s usually smiling face than _that_ grin, was no amusement at all. The Midlander was yet talking in the background: ‘... Act. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ Zain ignored this, and concentrated on the smiling Irishman, and on the Irishman’s dangerous smile. _Aye,_ reflected he, _the only worse thing would be no smile at all._ If ever he failed to smile, that lip, that jaw, would be the clearest danger signals in Nature.

‘And is it the side of the angels you’re on, then?’ The Irishman was smiling yet as he challenged Zain.

‘Yes,’ said the Midlands’ answer to a sculpted David, interrupting. ‘He’s job. I suggest, DI Malik, you and _Ceannfort_ – DCI – Horan work out what you intend to do.’

‘That depends,’ said Zain, ‘on who you are and what you intend to do. And why you seem to think you’re in charge here, and who the _fuck_ Samuels and Lucas actually are.’

‘No, it really doesn’t,’ said the Midlander, all mild earnestness. ‘As your Chief Constable could attest. Andy; Stan. Take –’

‘No,’ snapped DI Malik, West Midlands Police. ‘If you lot were attested on my ground, I’d know you – and them. I don’t. And until then? No.’

‘No more y’ would know,’ grinned the Irishman. ‘T’e Funnies is like t’at, and it is t’e way o’ t’em whatever. Here is _my_ warrant cyard – y’ see I’m seconded from G2, _Stiúrthóireacht na Faisnéise,_ the Directorate o’ Military Intelligence, ta t’e ould enemy, and ta SnF from _Aonad Faireacháin Náisiúinta,_ t’e National Surveillance Unit o’ t’e _Gardaí_. And sure and t’at tells y’ all as wants tellin’? If y’ were wantin’ ta send Liam t’ere a love letter after, sure Box 500’d find him. And D/Sgt Lucas and DI Samuels is CTC, SO15, t’e ould Special Branch. Feckin’ Black and Tans, is what t’ey are, t’em two feckin’ Taffs,’ chortled DCI Horan. ‘So just y’ guess what and who is Liam, and how high he ranks; and his warrant cyard’ll be from your Home Office and your MoD t’get’er, but. Ah, now, we’re all job t’get’er, in a degree, bar t’em two.’ He nodded to where the curly-maned lad was inspecting the titchy Tyke for damage, to the evident pleasure of both.

‘’M not going to ask for his. But I’ll damn’ well see Samuel’s and Lucas’ briefs before I take your word for it.’

‘And would y’ have DI Riach and D/Sgt Riach inserted in t’is team and comin’ ta a robbery wit’ _t’eir_ warrant cyards in t’eir pockets, and himself and _her,_ t’e wan, likely to search t’em at t’e first suspicion? Catch yerself on.’

‘Then we have a standoff, _mate._ ’

‘No, really, I’m afraid we don’t.’ That was the Antinous of Bilston again. ‘This is a CONTEST operation with aid from our Irish partners – because these two weren’t merely chancing their arms for the swag, you know, or, rather, to keep the swag to themselves – and I’d say your CTU Chief Superintendent – Sue _is_ still your governor, isn’t she? – ought to be here, oh, about … _now._ ’

* * *

So had they been, the Counter Terrorism Unit. Summoned no doubt from the vasty deep by some wizardry of Five’s. This annoyed Zain unbearably. He’d suspected the presence of a Modred; he’d been willing, if given reason, to believe Liam could, possibly, be Lancelot or Arthur or Gawaine; to find t’ bugger’d been Merlin all along, though....

Not for the first time, he cursed himself for a fool for having left the sanity of Yorkshire, its cold clarity and no-bloody-nonsense, for the West Midlands Police.

Worst of all had been the evident disappointment of those he now knew as Louis and Harry, the Fattorini employees, who – as Louis protested – had simply been there on their lawful occasions as bespoke gold- and silversmiths, and ended by being first hostages and then witnesses having to sign interminable reams of paper: both by way of statements and as acknowledgements under the Official Secrets Act 1911 to 1989. Tomlinson L, who was sufficiently stroppy about it, had been forced to miss his return to London; and, as he had expressed it unblushingly, had not even been able to make use of the time by being kept as hostages in a strongroom and shagging away what they might have feared were to be their last hours (choice of potential partner unstated but obvious). Although, by the look of it, as he’d swiftly accepted Harry’s pressing offer to stop with him overnight before he took the 7.07 to Marylebone, that was not going to deprive them of their apparent mutual decision to become lovers at first sight.

The bumph was disposed of: a good deal more quickly than commonly, as was perhaps only to be expected. Chummy One and Chummy Two had plenty of previous: club numbers with multiple tick-marks. They’d thought, no doubt, as old lags will, that if it all went pear-shaped, they could safely do it by the numbers: admit nowt, demand a brief, stay shtum until the solicitor arrived, and then claim the knock was duff, that they’d been swifted, had up for nothing; and that owt they might be claimed to have said meant only that they’d been verballed as well as stitched-up.

But the Funnies didn’t play defensive strokes at the wicket. _They’d_ a tame beak always to hand to grant a warrant to spin the two bods: not merely their usual drums, but all the little hidey-holes Chummy One and Chummy Two were shocked to learn weren’t a safe secret at all. (How they could be that daft was a mystery to DI Malik: once it was clear that Samuels and Lucas, just as much as Ant, Danny, and Zain himself, were all job, and had infiltrated the whole mob, _surely_ even those as thick as these thieves ought to have realised that they were _for_ it and had no secrets left....) And the poor sods hadn’t expected, either, again short-sightedly, that they’d be had off for more than robbery; or that, their clients being who and what they were, they’d be served with a TPIM notice apiece by luncheon-time tomorrow.

In fact, Five and the Funnies, with an Irish assist, had Chummy One and Chummy Two trapped dead lbw, and – never mind the uselessness of DA-Notices in the Internet Age – silently and fully so, and without the Great British Public’s being any the wiser. What’s never whispered cannot be leaked.

So the bumph was done, and in short enough order; and, if DI Malik had nothing left to do, and as he’d never be able to claim credit for the knock, it was time to get into his half-blues and slope off down the Gunmakers’ Arms for a well-earnt pint.

He was just at the door when the Chief Funny stopped him: Liam, as he now knew, Payne (if that were in fact his name, which, he being Five, Zain begged leave to doubt, and whatever his rank or title was); and with DCI Horan in tow.

‘Down the local?’

‘Aye.’

‘So are we. I’d expect you’re off down the Gunmakers’. I’d suggest the Wellington, instead.’

‘Would you.’

‘You’re owed – and not only some explanations.’

DCI Horan grinned, earnestly. ‘Be said by him, do. And isn’t it m’self as’ll be j’inin’ y’ for t’e first jar or two? Sure and y’ cannot say, “No,” t’ t’at, whatever.’

The prospect of getting some gen – gen which, if DCI Horan were there, might not in fact be wholly duff after all – was a hard one for Zain to resist. A man does not become a Detective Inspector if he is not by nature adamant about Finding Out.

* * *

As they walked into the Wellington, Zain spotted, and was spotted by, his least favourite Chief Superintendent, a vicious old bastard who, it was strongly suspected, was the last remaining racist in the police service, and thought Enoch had been too soft on immigration.

‘Malik.... Mumping a pint, are we? You’ll go on the dab for this.’ He spoke softly and with vicious enjoyment, but he was heard all the same by Zain’s companions.

Liam put his brief, his warrant card, in the Chief Superintendent’s face, almost clipping his nose with it and leaving him cross-eyed with struggling to read it. ‘And bang goes _your_ QPM hopes. DI Malik is with me, and with _Ceannfort_ Horan of _An Garda Síochána._ You weren’t here. We weren’t here. This convo never happened, sunshine. And if you forget to forget, it’s you who’ll be stuck on. And if, as I’d wager, your dislike of DI Malik implicates the provisions of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, your feet shan’t touch ground, aye?

‘Now I suggest, I really do suggest, you go home. _Now._ And lock away your memory of a conversation which never happened with three men you never saw. And you’ll be signing the Official Secrets Act before you’re through your own front door, anyroadup.’

Without even waiting for a response, Liam swept forwards, trailed by a smirking Niall Horan and a Zain Malik who couldn’t possibly be accused of holding any expression at all.

The landlord met them, and with swift discretion led them to a small room which was not one of the ‘function rooms’ advertised by the pub. It had all the same a table, comfortable chairs, a Georgian sideboard, and a coal fire; and was clearly available for the sort of conferences which never officially occurred.

‘They’ll bring up the takeaway when it gets here,’ said Liam. ‘No names, no pack drill. They don’t do meals here, as you likely know. Don’t panic, Niall, in addition to ordering everything Manzils cook, I also went through Chung Ying Central and Bodega like a dose of salts.’

Zain blinked.

‘You’ve never seen Nialler eat,’ explained Liam.

They paused as a barmaid came discreetly in with pints: Fireside bitter for Liam, noted Zain, BFG for DCI Horan, and Zain’s preferred dark mild, Pig on the Wall. Liam Bloody Payne was too sodding well-informed by half.

Zain said as much after the barmaid withdrew.

‘It must seem so, anyroadup,’ said Liam, with a smile. ‘And your suspicions’ll be worse when the nosh arrives. But … naturally you’ve been vetted, thoroughly. And it’s time I returned the favour.’ He handed his warrant card over for Zain’s perusal. ‘I’m a Wulfrunian, m’self. You can ask Glenno all about me if you like, down Bilston.’ The good sergeant was the skipper of that neighbourhood police team, as Zain well knew. ‘Dad’s with Tarmac; before m’ sisters and I came along, Mum worked at Beatties. I got taken up by St Peter’s for my school.... Was scouted – I thought – for Team GB when I was a youth.’ Zain could well imagine; and forced himself not to do. ‘Turns out I was being scouted for other things.

‘Joined the Army; was hustled into Sandhurst as an LEO; then seconded to … Other General Duties.’

Niall snorted.

* * *

Niall had departed. So had the nosh, much of it – to Zain’s lasting disbelief – inside DCI Horan’s flat belly (‘ _How_ is he not _fat_? No, sod that, he’s eaten a whole chicken achari biryani by himself, six burritos, a plate of dim sum, crispy shredded beef in chilli, half an order of methi, pad thai ho fun, and bloody churros for afters, how is not _ill_?’).

And over the empty plates, Liam had drawn back the curtain and explained everything which had gone into the CONTEST operation and the threat to which it responded: which Zain had thought a mere robbery to be foiled.

‘All right. You’ve obviously vetted me, Liam: I knew that before you began explaining things I’m probably not meant to know. I knew that when you’d ordered me lamb chasini, come to that. Make your pitch.’

Liam smiled, a bit ruefully. ‘Oh, you’re the sort we’d like to recruit, no question. There’s only one thing makes me hesitate.’

‘What? That I’m a British Pakistani and a Muslim, and, useful though I’d be, I’d never be fully trusted?’

‘No.’ Liam spoke firmly, just this side of outraged. ‘No. The problem’s a personal one. Which is why I’d not be making the approach: it’d be someone else tapped you on the shoulder, if anyone does.’

‘Personal … _mate_?’

‘Personal.’

‘What: was I too thick and too slow in not tumbling to the inwardness of the robbery?’

‘Not at all. I’m saying only that I’d sooner see you transfer – and Ant and Danny, too – to the Met’s SO15 CTC than to us. Partly because you’re too good and straight a copper for some of what we face sometimes – and must do, sometimes. But. In the main, it’s personal.’

‘You just don’t like me face?’

‘On the contrary. That’s the problem. If you put in for lateral transfer to the Met – and it wouldn’t be: you’d get a step to DCI – something’d be on the table which couldn’t be if we took you on at Thames House, let alone in JTAC as such. My duty to Her Maj tells me you ought to be begged to join. My personal wishes tell me I’d rather see you at the Met, working with us.

‘I did a good deal of the vetting of you. You don’t know me yet; but I know you as well as your sisters do. It’s … an intimate sort of thing, vetting a potential recruit.’

‘Intimate....’

‘Yes, that’s the problem. Unlike two goldsmiths we’ve met today, I’m not one to see and seize. But … I already know you. And. I’d damned well like to fraternise with you in ways I can’t do if you join my lot, but could do, just, if you go to the Met.’

‘Would you.’ Zain was fronting it; but his old copper’s instinct of suss was telling him that Liam wasn’t lying. And he knew he’d been fighting off the tendrils of sheer amatory obsession since they’d seen one another in the Assay Office.

‘Well,’ said Zain, after an interminable moment. ‘I don’t at all enjoy not getting credit for a good crime knock. And I hate being kept in cotton-wool about what’s going on on my ground. And I’d quite like to get my step to DCI.’

‘Would you.’ Liam was smiling, now.

‘And I suggest we go somewhere that’s not here before I tell you all the other things I’d like.’

‘Am I one of those things?’

Zain grinned, blindingly. ‘We want to discuss that somewhere else. Somewhere with horizontal surfaces, preferably but not necessarily including a bed.’

Liam nearly knocked his chair over as he surged to his feet. ‘I’ll … get my coat.’

‘May as well,’ said Zain, wholly failing to keep his grin under any control at all. ‘You’ve pulled.’

* * *

END

* * *

 

 


	3. Fell purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an incident in Eden. No, the other one. In Westmorland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a general prompt which I shall reveal in the end notes … and which I have, naturally, de-Americanised.

* * *

 

They were halfway to Nine Standards Rigg: up on Mallerstang Edge, just North of High Seat, on Whitebank Hill, between the headwaters of Headley’s Gill and the Gale Sike tributaries. The watershed of England: Eastwards, above Uldale Gill Head and Lodge Hags, the gills and becks and sikes flowed inexorably to the German Ocean, the North Sea, by way of the River Swale and the Rivers Ure and Ouse, to Humber estuary; Westwards, all ran into the River Eden, to make their way to Solway Firth and the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. The night, full of stars though it might have been, was veiled in cloud. Unseen beneath them was Mallerstang, the Vale of the infant Eden: Outhgill and Shoregill, Pendragon Castle, The Thrang....

Liam was getting himself back into training, after an injury; and so was Niall, commonly his partner in partnered races and marathons, whose knees were the youngest part of him now bar his spirit, his appetites, and his sometimes juvenile humour. Competitive climbers and fell-runners, and those who combine those sports and those characters, are, naturally, a competitive lot; and no few of them nowadays, thought Liam, were humourless with it. There weren’t so many of them who could bear Niall on a course (the pub was a different matter, and Niall was the acknowledged sovereign and monarch of the pub); but Niall and Liam … well. There’d been some moments on the Great Traverse of the Black Cuillin, not least on Blaven, and some tricky times in the OMM and the Mourne, and a bad quarter hour on Carnedd Llewylen in the Pat Buckley, which had made them blood brothers for this life and the next, share and share about. They’d done the Snowdon together, naturally, and the Alyeska, and Liam had carried Niall, literally, after his knees had gone a bit Pete Tong, in the WMRA’s Betws-y-Coed WMRC; but leaving aside these points races, they’d done the Ramsay and the Bob Graham together, and the Wicklow (Niall was, after all, Irish as Westmeath veal), and for that matter the Ennerdale Horseshoe and the Long Mynd Valleys (Liam was of course a Midlander), and for that matter the Coniston Fell Run and the South Wales Traverse, supporting one another and urging each other on to personal bests. They were senior enough now in their sport that Niall was actually on staff with IMRA – which gave him as much personal leave as he liked, to climb, fell-run, and mountain-marathon –, and Liam, part of the England Athletics national staff: with the same proviso. Both were already being spoken of, in quiet corners of Whitehall, as likely to figure in future Honours Lists – an idea very much approved, and pushed, by the Rt Hon. The Lord Coe, Seb thinking the world of them both and having interested himself in the idea of dual citizenship for one Niall Horan.

It was a quiet night enough, as they camped – with, of course, the necessary permissions – above the Edge, in conditions as near and rough as they could come to those of competition. Wind and sheep and fell ponies are omnipresent on the fells, and, in Mallerstang, so also is the sound, often enough the steam sound, of the Settle & Carlisle; and their noises are a part of the quiet, however loud. Niall and Liam were just drifting off, tired but happy with their progress, when they heard the racket.

The wind (and soaking rains) in Westmorland – call it as, ‘Cumbria’, who dares – is prevailingly from the West’ards; and the Eden Valley at Mallerstang is narrow and steep. Across it, Westering, answering the Edge and High Seat and Gregory Chapel and Hugh Seat – named for an early Lord of Westmorland, Hugh de Morville, one of the assassins of S Thomas Becket –, stand Little Fell and High Dolphinsty, The Nab, and Wild Boar Fell whence Ais Gill rises to fall tearaway to the tumbling vale below. A racket on Wild Boar Fell is heard readily enough on High Seat, on a wind out of the West.

And racket there was. Whistles, and lights.

‘Jaysus,’ said Niall, his hair mussed astoundingly from his brief moment of sleep. Liam was already on his feet, staring into the darkness. The whistles and lights were not being given out in the prescribed and canonical fashion of mountain distress calls; but they could be all the less ignored for that, as it quite likely meant that some fool or party of fools, benighted on the fells, were, as well, inexperienced with it, even unto having no very clear idea of procedures.

And of course they couldn’t possibly be left in difficulties; nor could Niall and Liam conceivably ignore the signals in the easy assurance that some shepherd or farmer should struggle up Wild Boar from Angerholm or Aisgill in the night watches and see to them, or a search party convene beerily at the Moorcock in Garsdale far. Mobile coverage being what it was in Mallerstang, hard upon the marches of the Dales National Park, they could hardly, even had they been willing to, ring up the Kirkby Stephen Mountain Rescue Team and get them there before they themselves could arrive and render aid; and it was in any case incumbent upon them, as experienced and responsible fell-runners and mountaineers, to take the lead.

Those who knew Nialler only in pubs, and who did not know him for who and what he was, should have been astonished to see him in action. He was already securing their camp and finding and handing out to ‘Ould Payno, me darlin’ lad-een’, map and compass and navigational aids, even as he himself was putting together a stripped-down emergency kit. Niall always liked to _look_ effortless in all things: an end which relied, naturally, upon fanatical training and fanatical planning and an endless capacity for taking pains and making preparations.

Which, Liam being Liam, temperamentally given to being Crazy Prepared, was a large part of why they were a revered and all-save-unbeatable team. It was typical of them that, although they had never contemplated having to cross the railway line, they had to hand the timetable of the Settle-Carlisle Railway. Simply on the chance. Neither of them intended to die by being hit by a locomotive: not even by a mainline steam excursion, let alone by taking the virginity of Virgin’s 6.14 down train from Carlisle, passing between Kirkby Stephen and Garsdale a trifle after ten of nights; and if that danger were past, it was all the same true that, now the line was repaired and the permanent way strengthened, the goods trains were busy on the line, mostly with coal and gypsum, at all hours, to relieve congestion on the West Coast Line.

‘Angerholme or Aisgill?’ Niall knew this ground almost as well as did Liam.

Liam thought for a moment, as he flashed his torch in response to the signals: three flashes in a minute’s time, then a minute’s wait. ‘I _think_ they’re nearer The Nab. But I’d say Angerholme anyroadup. We can go by Black Fell Moss and The Riggs, and Hanging Lund – I know, I know –, and then the ford, and cross the line by Pasture Gill. We’d lose too much time, going on to Ais Gill Viaduct. Take the Common, North of Yoadcomb Sike.’

‘Scramble up between Blackbed Scar and Yoadcomb Scar, is it? Chrisht and y’ don’t ask much in the dark, y’ don’t. Well, and what are y’ waitin’ upon, but?’

‘Save your breath,’ grinned Liam. They were, after all, even if going warily by night, fell-runners, with a nice turn of speed; and, after all, there might be lives in the balance.

* * *

It was a strange journey enough by night. Due South beside Trough Riggs by Steddale Mouth and Gregory Chapel cairn, keeping High and Low Bands and High and Low Loven Scars on their right hands; across Archy Styrigg to pass between Slate Gutter on their Eastwards and Hangingstone Scar on their West, passing White Brow and Raven’s Nest where those who’d settled and renamed the old Brythonic lands had brought, for a time, Odin and the Raven’s Banner; and so to High Rigg and Low Rigg, and Joseph’s Gill guiding them by Long Cove amidst the Pot Holes, South of Black Blote Hill. Not even the drystone walls checked them, as they pushed on.

Hanging Lund Scar above Stirk House was not a descent they’d have chosen on a dark night had it not been an emergency; the grade was considerably less steep both North and South of Hanging Lund, at The Ings and at Cumpston Hill: but speed was what mattered just now, and the course beside the waterfalls of Rigg Sike offered the surest swift course to the Eden Ford between Ash Bank and Parry Gill, and the Angerholme Gill confluence: as attested the convergence of foot- and bridle-paths in the near vicinity, once the Old Track of the Pennine Bridleway – and the Eden Watercut sculpture – was past.

And all the time, mixed with other noises, a sort of regular thump, the whistles could yet be heard, and flashes of light seen upon Wild Boar Fell; and all the time, even as they ran and scrambled, pacing themselves and minding their footing, in grim silence, either Niall or Liam flashed back the responsive signal of threes: Rescue Is Coming.

* * *

After they’d plashed through the Ford, they’d donned – dark of night or no – reflective, high-visibility waistcoats: the Kirkby Stephen Road, the B6259 which ran from Garsdale North to Sandford, stood before them, and the railway line after. And already moorland farmers and staunch, thrawn householders as rocky as their land and houses, were asking them what was afoot.

‘Rescue, it seems,’ said Liam, shortly: shortly not from brusqueness or discourtesy – he was a notably polite lad – but from saving his breath. ‘If you ring through to KSMRT or the plods, tell them we’re mounting a response already. My name’s Payne, Liam Payne, if they ask; this is Niall Horan. The Mountain Rescue Team at least will know those names. How’s mobile reception this side of the Valley and the Common? All right; tell them we’ll ring them if they want to stand up, no reason to bring them out if they’re not wanted, and the helicopter’s fast enough as makes no difference.’

* * *

On consideration, and taking better bearings as they neared the flashes of lights, which had, worryingly, become increasingly intermittent, they took the bridge over the railway line, North of Angerholme.

They kept up speed, leg muscles burning after a long day and this disturbed night: the old feeling, to be ignored and pushed through: up the Westward half of Mallerstang Common beside Pasture Gill, across Yoadcomb Hill to the spring and head of Yoadcomb Sike. They were almost at the Scars. They had reached the 650m line: 2132 feet and a half. Wild Boar Fell, above them, was 708m at its trig point, which was just about where they’d reach it, at 2323 feet: and there, where Yoadcomb and Blackbed Scar met in grim parapet and machicolation, they faced a scramble in the dark, of near sixty meters in one hundred and twenty five.

That was not enough to take the grin off Niall’s face, any more than was the wet of the bogs which scattered all Mallerstang (there was reason enough why few people rambled directly up from Angerholme or Aisgill to the summit of Wild Boar Fell, preferring to go by way of Swarth Fell to its South-Westwards). Few people had seen him without his grin. Those who had done had never forgot, though all should be forget: they remembered with the advantages of terror just how formidable he could look. When those blue eyes turned cold and stormy as Bantry Bay in a gale, and that long jaw came forwards beneath a tight and unsmiling mouth, Niall could be as frightening as could be an enraged Liam: and an angry Liam looked like a cricketer-turned-boxer bent on murder.

And Niall was not smiling now, at all, at all.

It was not the climb which had brought that look to his face. It was the clearer sounds from above: music, and whistles with it.

In a grim and determined silence, filled with righteous anger, they clambered up, full of fell purpose.

* * *

‘A fucking _rave_?’

Liam and Niall, utterly furious, stood, chests heaving for all their conditioned fitness, on the table-top summit of Wild Boar Fell.

The source of the lights and whistles was a bit Northwards of them, towards The Nab. As one, they walked – not ran – towards it, their footsteps the tramp of Doom.

* * *

‘A. Fucking. Rave.’

‘Or a feckin’ doggin’ site,’ snarled Niall. They had reached the camp. A lithe, disturbingly handsome youth – British Indian or British Pakistani, by the looks of him – was sprawled like a starfish on the ground, gazing vacantly upwards, and occasionally blowing a whistle as the beat thrummed from an iPod. A few feet away, heedless of a world they might well no longer be very materially _in,_ a lanky youth with a Brian May mane was shagging – like clappers – a figure who, even in the limited light of the firepit – and the bloody _disco ball_ rigged to catch its flicker, Christ –, was discernibly a pixie Peter Pan with an arse like two pillows.

They exchanged a glance which boded ill for these three miscreants. Both had a somewhat sacral view of wilderness, and Open Access lands, and fells and mountains; and knew just how this sort of thing could jeopardise these things as well as, felt they, insulting the mountain: to say nothing of the inconvenience to which they had been put, and how much more inconvenience to which the Mountain Rescue Team might well have been put. KSMRT was, like most such teams in the UK, made up wholly of dedicated volunteers.

Speaking of which.... Liam saw that he had signal. He rang up a number he knew well.

‘Kath? Payno here.... No, you and the lads’ll not be wanted. Three townee yoofs on a lad’s holiday, who clearly didn’t understand the signals they was sending. You’re a duck, love … no, Nialler and I’ll stop with them overnight – we’re not bloody going _back_ across Mallerstang in this dark … aye, we’ll l’arn ’em for you.... They’ll be taught, _that_ I can tell you.... Ta, love.’

Niall had already taken down the idiot glitterball – that there’d been no protest, or indeed acknowledgement of their presence, told its own story – and was extinguishing the fire. It was only when Liam cut off the music that the supine figure with the whistle stirred.

‘Rozzers,’ mumbled he. His voice was thick and his face sad: quite likely, thought Liam, a sadness begotten of the aftermath of booze on the aftermath of spliff, with the added misery of coming down off MDMA. Or, of course, it could be his having found himself gooseberry to the two idiots shagging away a few yards from him, clearly off their tits and, thus far, unconscious of the addition to their party.

The sad youth was also, reflected Liam, almost too pretty to get the bollocking his actions merited.

Almost.

‘Jaysus,’ said Niall, in a tone like the cracking of whips. ‘Is it us as’d be t’e feckin’ Gardaí? Catch yerself on, lad. It’s t’e mountains t’emselves we are, but. I’m wit’ IMRA, and Liam here’s EA.’

Liam broke in, then, as in duty bound. ‘If you’re ill or injured, I _am_ a retained firefighter as well, and –’

‘If you’re not the plods,’ said the youth, ‘bugger off.’

‘Feck t’at f’r a game o’ sodgers,’ said Niall. ‘Sure an’ y’ led us a dance across half Eden t’ rescue yerself in t’e dark, we’re not goin’ _back._ ’ He leaned over and spoke quietly to Liam. ‘T’is one’s t’ you – and do not y’ be distracted by him, I know he’s t’e sort y’ fall for, and yer soft heart – whiles I kick t’e two feckers inta reality.’

‘Rescue?’

‘And for what waad we not, and yourself puttin’ out distress signals? T’ank God and his Mother an’ all the saints it was us came and found you, or sure it’d have _been_ t’e Guards all t’e same, and you nicked by t’em, but.’ Niall was uncompromising, even as he washed his hands of the supine youth and went to interrupt the shagfest a few yards on.

* * *

The rocket Niall and Liam had intended to give the three campers – and the one with the bum was assuredly camp – had, in the end, had to wait. The pretty British Asian had succumbed to a sobbing jag before abruptly falling deeply asleep; the campy, stroppy Tyke with The Bum had first wanted to mix it with Niall (which, even had he been sober and in his right mind, and armed with half a brick and a spanner, should have been a fool’s errand: Niall could put the hems to anyone, if pressed, let alone with Liam there to aid), and then collapsed; and the one with the Brian May hair had sputtered incoherently and then passed out.

Liam had been half-tempted to ring up Kirkby Stephen Mountain Rescue Team after all, _and_ the local plods, but he and Niall had – just – stayed their hands once they satisfied themselves that none of the three was, actually, in medical straits.

Neither Liam nor Niall was willing to forego the legitimate pleasure, and vengeance, however, of giving these three idiots a right barracking, bollocking, and wigging come the morn. They made themselves comfortable, and dozed until the pearly dawn began to filter through the dripping morning fogs and mists of the fells.

At which point, standing very much over the three twats at close range, Niall began pounding tins together and Liam blasted that damned whistle.

* * *

The Tyke With The Bum had come up fighting, although as unsteady on his pins as a newborn lamb; and Niall had patted him, gently enough, in such a way as sat him down, even as Liam had hauled the ridiculously good-looking British Asian and the lanky, flailing one with the wild mane, to their feet, effortlessly, by the napes of their necks. ‘And t’ank t’e Dear he’s not wringin’ t’em,’ said Niall, with a dangerous grin of the sort commonly associated with wolves.

‘The fuck _are_ you?’

‘Ah, and t’at’s fair enough,’ said Niall, in tones that belied his words. ‘Sure we in-tro-juiced ourselves lasht night, but I’m t’inkin’ y’ wasn’t attendin’, at all. My name it is Niall Horan, o’ t’e Irish Mountain Runnin’ Association; and _he’s_ Liam Payne, o’ England Athletics. If anyt’ing t’ere was y’ knew o’ fell-runnin’ and mountaineerin’ and all sorts, y’ might recognise t’e names of us....’

‘But, clearly,’ said Liam, ‘you don’t know nobbut next anunst to nothing about the mountains you’re on or how to conduct yourselves.’

‘Oh....’ The wild-haired one spoke, slowly, raspingly, with a sort of Cheshire-Mancunian-WAG-Country drawl, the voice of a grammar-school boy from a tarted-up village turned dormitory town. ‘But I’ve heard of you.’

‘Have you.’ Liam was stern.

‘M’ sister.... Gems. I’m Harry Styles.’

Niall went white, then red: possibly with rage on both counts, although Liam was not quite as certain of that as he might be.

Before anything else devastating could be said, the Professional Yorkshireman cut in, full of condescension. ‘Aye? Well, _I_ haven’t. And what do you mean, cooming here and treating us in this fashion –’

Young Styles winced as Niall’s blue electric glare, like a ship’s battery, swivelled to his lover and found the range.

‘Gemma Styles – who’s raised more funds for _Lowland_ Rescue, and Cheshire SAR in particular, nor hot dinners have y’ had – wants ta look ta her baby brother’s choice in friends, but. Let alone who he’s feckin’. It’s IMRA is t’e job t’ me, and the mountains m’ passion, but sure and I’m one o’ t’em as makes up t’e Glen of Imaal Red Cross MRT when I’m at home; and Liam – who’s a retained firefighter, he is, wit’ it – is on call all t’e time whatever wit’ Staffordshire Lowland Search and Rescue and wit’ Central Rescue in t’e Midlands when he has – don’t make me laugh – days _aff._ And t’e t’ree o’ yis in t’e black o’ night makin’ whistle-signals and lights and distress calls, and pullin’ us aff t’e fells acrost Eden t’ race t’ yer assistance?

‘Before y’ come out on t’ese fells, y’ wee town-terrace-bred bastard, y’ want ta –’

Liam intervened, then. ‘You’ve an obligation, all three of you, like everyone else. To conduct yourselves proper, and know what a distress signal is, and when to give it out – and when not to do. These places, these … sacred … places are for all … and they’ll not be if you lot and others like you muck them about. Nialler and I were over there –’ he pointed into the wall of mist – ‘and ran to your aid, in the dark, without thinking of ourselves, interrupting our training, because you might have been injured and calling for help. And we get here, and we find.... _Christ,_ what in buggery were you lot playing at? Dogging, two of you, and the other one out of his mind on Christ knows what....’ He levelled a look at Harry Styles which might have levelled him flat. ‘Your sister’s brother at least damn’ well wants to know better. We risked our necks to save yours, and it turns out … _fuck._ I don’t know why we bothered to save you.’

‘Because it _is_ us as saved yis,’ added Niall, ‘if not from immedjiat’ danger, t’en from bein’ banged up down t’e nick. Because had it been anyone else respondin’ – and yis on Chrisht and His saints know what – sure and what for waad y’ not be b’fore a magistrate t’is day?’

The Styles lad had folded in on himself and put his head in his hands as he sat on the cold, wet turf; and the British Asian would not meet anyone’s eyes. The Tyke had, apparently, stronger reserves of bloody-minded chippiness.

‘’S not _my_ fault you took it on yourselves to –’

Fortunately for him, the Styles lad, with a, ‘ _Boo,_ no,’ pulled him down beside him just before Niall made up his mind to take a swing at the gobby sod. From which Liam was not quite certain he’d have held Niall back.

Of course, Liam was well aware that, in addition to the obvious and justifying causes of Niall’s fury, his temper had not been improved by a disturbed night and a needless rescue, and had been, most of all, inflamed by hunger.

Gemma’s brother’s timing was not as bad as it might have been, or as might have been expected in light of his prior follies: for it was just then that he asked, in wiling and plangent tones of apology, ‘What can we do to make it up to you?’ He wisely had his massive paw clamped over his lover’s too-facile mouth as he asked.

Liam was very quick to respond, with an eye to Niall’s temperament and his own wants. ‘Reckon the least you could do would be breakfuss.’

Harry Styles brightened almost as much and as quickly as did Niall: who may have enjoyed the prospect more even than commonly by noting how the very mention of brekker made the Tyke and the male model turn positively green.

* * *

Over breakfast – and whatever else Harry-Gemma’s-Brother Styles might be, he was capable of turning out Cordon Bleu cookery on a small fire, from tins and pouches, which improved Niall’s outlook wonderfully – Liam and Niall dinned into the three other youths the rules, the Countryside Code, and Mountain Safety, Its First Principles, Ramblers, For the Use Of. Sternly.

And with enough tea in the five, and meals in three of them (the British Pakistani model and the gobby Yorkshireman even now couldn’t face so much as toast, and had gone quiet and haggard in consequence, although Liam was not going to let them amble even gently and with guides down Swarth Fell to the valley without getting something in them, and glucose not least), the whole story came out at last.

How they’d planned to bring Zayn – that was the British Pakistani who might have modelled for Armani – out to get away from it all. How the ‘all’ Zayn had wanted to be diverted from thinking about had been his finding his girlfriend, to whom he’d been about to propose, in bed with his last boyfriend (Niall muttered something about, ‘Jaysus, bisexuals, twice t’e drama’ – and shot a look at Liam which had made Liam go very red). How they’d got a bit … merry … (Liam had snorted, in his straight-edge, sporty fashion). How, in turn, Harry and Louis (the latter being the Doncastrian lad with the gob, the arse, and the chips on both shoulders) had, under the impetus of divers substances, finally given way to what had been building between them (‘and don’t think,’ had Louis said, sourly, ‘I’ll forgive owt of this, this were _not_ how I expected me first shag with Hazza to end’). How Zayn, reduced – at the worst possible time for it – to the role of gooseberry, had sunk into depression. How Louis, to cheer him up, had, er, well.... (‘Me mam’s a nurse! Even fucked up I knew I wasn’t going to give him owt as’d put him in danger!’) And how, not knowing any better, they’d put on their sound and light show, with whistles, unknowing of what it could be read as.

Niall, when the tale was told, looked – unsmiling – at Louis. ‘And is t’ere any more o’ yer feckin’ drugs?’

‘No.’

‘Good, because it’s not us’d aid yis in disposin’ of t’em. Liam.... It’s yerself’s t’e patient one, always. And soft-hearted wit’ it. But. Why did y’ stay yer hand, last night?’ Niall’s tone suggested, to Liam, who knew him as well as their siblings knew them both, that he had his own suspicions as to the answer.

‘Because they didn’t merit getting Kirkby Stephen MRT out on a shout, when those good folk might have been sleeping peaceably. They’d already cocked up _our_ night; they weren’t in emergency distress; why cock up anyone else’s?’ Liam paused, and took the plunge. ‘And now I know why they were out, even though they oughtn’t to be let out in the hoss-road without a keeper, let alone on the Fells.... And now I know why Zayn here was miserable, and why these idiots meant, however daftly, to cheer him.... Well, I’m as glad I didn’t call in KSMRT. Because they’d have had to have called out Cumbria Constabulary, with what they’d have found. And that wasn’t on.’

‘Thank you,’ said Harry, quietly. ‘We’d have.... Well. You know.’

Liam stared at him, coolly. ‘It wasn’t for you. It might have been, if I’d known then about Zayn. But as it were.... If Cumbria Constabulary’d had to come out, they’d have sent those experienced on the fells. Craig, or Simon; or Chris; Mo and Helen, maybe. And I’d not do that to them: not with them in training for and getting ready for the Snowdonia Seven.’

Zayn spoke, for the first time since the explanations had begun; and Liam did his best not to react to that smoky, seductive sound. ‘Whatever the reason. Um. Thanks.’

‘Ah, now, don’t t’ank him,’ said Niall, swift to seize the opportunity in Liam’s behalf. ‘Sure, and isn’t Payno t’e man as’d understand?’

‘Leeyum?’

Liam looked off into what had been, but for the enveloping fog, the middle distance, towards High Greenrigg to the North-West’ards. ‘I. I understand. I came back early from an event: we’d had to pull out when Nialler’s knees packed it in. M’ best mate, who I’d always been about half in love with, although we’d never taken it very far, had been watching m’ house and m’ dogs. He. Well.’

‘What Liam means,’ said Niall, ruthlessly, ‘is, he came home unexpectedly ta find his ould mate, as himself trusted as a brot’er, _in_ Liam’s own house and bed, and he havin’ a t’reesome wit’ Liam’s fi- _an_ -cée and Liam’s last girlfriend but one, t’e one as danced in all t’e pop vijjeos.’

‘Fook,’ said Louis and Zayn in impromptu chorus, as Harry tripped over himself in throwing himself into hugging Liam.

‘So,’ said Niall, uncompromisingly, ‘it’s lucky y’ can count yerselves whatever, wit’ more luck nor y’ deserve and more luck nor us Irish, and _t’at’s_ not fair at all, at all. But it is t’e way of it whatever. And be y’ said by me: repay yer luck, and himself t’ere, or worse’ll befall yis.’ It is the Irish gift to make the barest statements sound like ancient proverbs and High Magic incantations. ‘No, it’s not t’reatening yis I am wit’ t’e _pol_ -lis. But if y’ won’t learn from t’is, it’s worse far I’ll be doing. I’ll have a wee bit-een talk wit’ Gemma and Anne, so I will.’

Harry, Louis, and Zayn went pale, all three.

* * *

The fog cleared – metaphorically and actually – as the day went on. And – as Niall, whispering, had labelled them – Kanga Styles, Tigger Tomlinson, and Eeyore Malik had shown themselves willing, rather pathetically willing, to learn, and to be still, and to catch something of Niall’s and Liam’s reverences and enthusiasm for fell and mountain.

Liam and Niall had helped to clear up the encampment (satisfying themselves that, yes, the lads _had_ in fact disposed and no longer possessed anything they oughtn’t to possess); and by luncheon-time, the five of them were able to amble and ramble slowly and carefully down to the valley of the River Eden. They picnicked at Carr Bridge; and if Niall were become slowly and a bit unwillingly amused by and fond of The Tommo and Haz (well, the latter was no hardship: Styles _fed_ him), Liam was wrapt and rapt in quiet conversation with Zayn. They shared an experience of heartbreak and betrayal both hoped their mates should never know, after all; and Liam’s prescription for getting past that was a typically sporty one: immersion in the natural world and hard physical training. (He was astonished, frankly, that someone so fit, in the one sense, as Zayn, who was far and away the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen – not that he said so at the time (when, months after, he did, Zayn simply told him to look in a mirror when next he shaved) –, was so unfit in another, so short of wind.

But, like the landscape, Zayn proved to have grit in abundance. All three of the lads insisted on accepting Niall’s offer, in the face of Liam’s deprecating it, to come up with them to High Seat; and Liam lost his heart for good when Zayn, gasping slightly but game all the same, looked out across the wild Mallerstang landscape and said, ‘High Seat? It’s Amon Lhaw’: which was of course just what Liam might have said, happy anorak that he was.

* * *

In July, all five of the lads were cheering on the Cumbria Constabulary teams which covered themselves in glory in their divisions in the Snowdonia Seven. Three of the lads were but newly introduced to the sport, and taking only baby steps; but they had learnt already quite enough to appreciate the nature of the challenge. Haz-and-Tommo: a plural treated nowadays as a singular entity, to the amusement of Niall and of Gemma, who were getting on all too well: had become more sane and settled, now, and were enthusiastic if unambitious ramblers (although it was a perpetual startlement, on access lands, for others to come across Styles H greeting the morning sun, as Louis protestingly snored, in various yoga poses which his clumsiness as a walker seemed to make impossible to him). They were even beginning to think of, someday, doing the Wainwright Coast to Coast, in easy stages.

And Zayn … Zayn was now Liam’s Zayn (and contrariwise), and, although he’d never (having started late) replace Niall as a mountain-marathon or fell-running partner to Liam, was otherwise always by Liam’s side, on the mountains or off them, and was scaling new heights in any number of ways: not least the horizontal. Niall might climb and clamber and run with Liam; but at the end of the day, it was Zayn whose privilege it was, and vice versa, to explore and be plumbed by and plumb and climb Liam.

As Niall said, with a wink, if he’d known what they were getting themselves into, sure and he’d have left the three to their fate on Wild Boar, and wasn’t it himself had nine standards, and all of them violated by this.

It might almost have been convincing, had he been able to leave off beaming at them.

* * *

END

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the general prompt, as mentioned, 
> 
> ‘“I was camping in the mountains when I saw emergency flares go off in the distance, but when I got to you it turns out you and your friends thought they were fireworks – so now I’m miles from my camp in the middle of the night because of your [stupid arse] so hand over one of those s’mores”’ 
> 
> … duly Briticised.


	4. Marley and Christmases Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another drinks-and-nibbles party at Bent Clough begins the Christmas season....
> 
> Which Peak farmhouse is Not Haunted, Ta Ever So.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From, of course, the prompt, ‘No, the house is definitely not haunted, why do you ask?’....
> 
> As a quick search by any search engine shall reflect, I have been rather busy of late with Real Work (and just in time for the Christmas trade...). Wherefore this bit of almost-belated Christmas cheer, which serves also as an entry in the ‘Modest Proposals’ series.
> 
> A very happy Christmas to all of you.
> 
> Oh: and may I add that the story of William Billinge is in fact precisely as given on his gravestone.

* * *

‘That,’ said Mr Batkin, ‘is the sort of foolish question which does incalculable damage to values in property.’

Mr Batkin, a dry, dusty, and indeed markedly Dickensian solicitor of very ripe years indeed, was inclined to be severe: indeed, to be censorious. He was the current Mr Batkin of Mortin, Critchlow, and Batkin, those impeccably correct High Street provincial solicitors who had through many generations managed, with discretion, strict probity, and punctilio, the affairs, and specially the conveyancing of property and the niceties of probate, of most of those within reach of their offices in Buxton, Longnor, and Leek.

Zayn and Liam were used to him, and rather fond of him (in Zayn’s case, precisely _because_ he was so very Dickensian), and knew his worth: no matter that his disposition, even at a pre-Christmas drinks-and-nibbles such as this, tended to be that of the skeleton at the feast.

‘I concede,’ added Mr Batkin, with more even than his usual aridity, ‘that nowadays there are persons for whom such a reputation should be rather considered as – in the unpleasing modern idiom – a “selling point” than a defect: there are a shocking number of fools in this world: but I do protest that the imputation to valuable real property of the quality of alleged “hauntedness” is mischievous and improper.’

Zayn and Liam managed to exchange a smile without moving their lips: it was the eye-crinkles sufficed to do it.

The Vicar chortled. ‘Come, come, Terence. One must distinguish. People who believe in ghosts and such phenomena, and consider them harmless or beneficent, _do,_ I imagine, pay a premium to buy a “haunted” house. People who disbelieve in such phenomena don’t care a … rap. Unless, of course, they intend to run the property as a B&B or something of the sort, charging a premium _to_ the believers. I quite agree that those who both believe in _and_ fear ghosts should be put off buying a farm, cottage, or house said to be haunted … but _are_ there any such people, really, nowadays?’

Mr Batkin – Mr Terence Batkin, poor bugger, and Liam and Zayn both carefully ignored the revelation of his Christian name whilst resolving never to use it (country districts are not commonly on such terms save amongst the most intimate of friends and kin) – sniffed. ‘There are any number of credulous persons about, my dear Vicar. And any number of those willing to impose upon and profit from their credulity.’ Mr Batkin’s tone suggested – not terribly subtly – that his own churchgoing was a social obligation of his class and position, and that such of the Vicar’s parishioners who attended Divine Service from any sense of actual conviction were amongst the credulous imposed upon and profited from.

‘You consider,’ smiled Zayn, ‘all these tales as – what? “An undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato” – with “more of gravy than of grave” about them?’

Mr Batkin looked sour enough to curdle the Christmas nibbles. ‘Oh, do oblige me, sir, by not quoting that everlasting and pestilential fool.’

Zayn suppressed a much broader smile. He had learnt long since that the most Dickensian of characters in this life were much the likeliest to despise and hate – perhaps to fear, from motives thy should never admit – Dickens.

* * *

The last of the guests had departed, leaving behind not a bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of perfectly done potato, let alone the least bubble of champers.

Liam and Zayn, companionably, had done a rough clean-up – they’d do the serious work in the morning – and were wrapt in one another before the fire.

‘“No, the house is definitely not haunted, why do you ask?”,’ whispered Zayn, half-giggling. He had not counted to three before he felt Liam begin to shake; by the time he might have counted five, the snorts had become guffaws, and Liam was almost rolling with it, and Zayn, himself, was trying – and failing – to catch his breath as he collapsed into hilarity.

* * *

It had been their first February at Bent Clough; and Nialler, Haz, and Tommo had all come to visit. Zayn, whose love for Bent Clough was a facet of his utter adoration of Liam who’d bought it in for them as a retreat and a Peak hideaway, had rivalled Liam in looking out the history of the place and the Peak as a whole – and its folklore –, and was retailing it, with gusto, to their mates. There was the story of the Cursed Wiggin, of course (a mountain ash – a ‘wiggin’ in the local speech – to which the tale, and – in the end – the hanged body, of a highwayman was attached); and the Golden Quern of Quarnford, forever lost to reach but clearly seen in certain lights beneath the waters of the infant River Manifold: a treasure rapt from the Other Folk and dropped in flight, never again to be held by them _or_ by mortal hands; the Curious Story of the Chapman of Flash.... Liam, too, had a fund of tales already: Mr Limer’s Dancing Bear; the events of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s passage through Leek; the Tamworth sow which herded the milch-cows; the Mouselow Stones; and, of course, the Remarkable Life of William Billinge, ‘born in a Cornfield at Fawfieldhead’, who served under Rooke at the capture of Gibraltar, under Marlborough at Ramillies, for the Hanoverians in the Fifteen and the Forty-Five, and, as testified to by his gravestone in Longnor churchyard, ‘died with a space of 150 yards of where he was born and was interred here the 30 January 1791 aged 112 years’.

Louis, of course, tended to snort scoffingly, even as to such undisputed scientific curiosities as the Double Sunset (Tommo was, after all, at once unremittingly urban and bloody-mindedly a Yorkshireman); Niall, equally as a matter of course, preserved a Jesuitical attitude and scepticism above a substratum of Irish atavism (‘I don’t _believe_ in T’e Good Folk, sure, but – _Jaysus –_ I’m not fool enough to _displease_ T’im People whatever’); and, as for _Haz_....

Liam and Zayn had forgotten, in their enthusiasms, Harry’s halfwitted attraction to the otherworldly. They had forgotten, as well, that Haz was a Cheshireman, to whom the Edge and the Peak were the source of childhood tales of mystery (Zayn’s verdict was that Hazza had read too damn’ much Alan Garner, growing up).

When Haz asked, huskily, the question they ought really to have anticipated, they’d remembered all right.

‘This isn’t the bungalow,’ smiled Liam, who was trying to be kind. ‘But, I promise, Zed and I’ll go outside with a torch if we hear any half-cow-half-murderers in the night.’

* * *

Harry hadn’t been half put out, and it had been quite half an hour, that February night, before he allowed himself to be jollied out of his petulance.

The next morning was cold and still beneath a leaden sky, the snowy ground brighter far than the louring heavens.

And the very first thing Zayn and Liam found themselves having to do was reassure Harry once more. ‘No,’ repeated Zayn, doing his best to damp down his asperity, ‘the house is definitely not haunted; why do you ask?’

Harry mumbled, shook his curly head, and shoved his hosts aside to take over the Aga, and breakfast-making.

Niall had never set an alarm in his life: not with clocks at home, not with mobiles or hotel wake-up calls in their touring life. His sixth sense always woke him in time for meals.

It was expected that he appear on cue and on time now.

It was not expected that the first thing he said, with a look of owlish sincerity and some unease, was, ‘T’is house is haunted, sure.’

Liam looked concerned: not that his house was haunted, but that their guests were discommoded. (Zayn didn’t quite think they were that: he thought they’d gone mad.) Worse, Liam looked, to Zayn, as if he were feeling _guilty,_ for having included, alongside the small doings of the parish and the amusing stories of the neighbourhood, tales of black dogs and headless cavaliers and Saxon hauntings and all the rest.

And Liam’s being made to feel guilty in his own house was, in Zayn’s view, Not Fookin’ _On._

‘No, it isn’t,’ snapped Zayn. ‘Why would you even _say_ that? It’s sharn.’

Niall’s blue electric glare was adamantine. ‘Know what I heard.’

Harry had removed his attention from hob, griddle, and kettle. ‘You … heard something?’

‘I did t’at,’ said Niall, uncompromisingly. ‘Did not y’rself? A keenin’?’

Haz’ eyes were wide. ‘N- no. But I … felt something. A … cold spot. And the lights flickered.’

Liam and Zayn exchanged a long look.

* * *

When Louis had managed to trudge down to breakfast, bundled up to a really quite insulting degree and complaining of sudden chills and queer lights, the perfectly warm atmosphere had turned positively chilly.

Zayn should in all likelihood have cared not a whit had _his_ hospitality been aspersed. But the implied criticism of _Liam_ was (chorus) Not Fookin’ _On._

Liam stepped in, irenic and determined that there be no quarrels – and, being Liam, bent on getting detailed and accurate information, and fixing the problem.

‘No,’ said Louis, in curt, and (even for him at his snottiest) specially nasal, response, ‘I heard nowt o’ that. It was the lights going wonky and the sudden cold spots.’

‘ _I_ heard it,’ insisted Niall, uncompromisingly. ‘A keenin’ it was, like a _bean sí_ t’at was keenin’. And there was a gibberin’ was in it, sure, like it was one o’ Shakespeare’s ghosts, and a squeakin’. Ill luck t’ere is in t’is house, but it’s dealt wit’.’ It is the peculiar character of the Celt to be able, in the most casual conversation, to turn phrases with the oracular sound of ancient proverbs in them.

Zayn shook his head in response to Liam’s questioning look. They’d heard and felt none of this, overnight or ever, and this was the first they’d heard of it.

* * *

Mr Ogan was a very sound man, and well-respected as he well deserved, a highly regarded builder. Alfred Palfreyman was the most trusted man in three wards for electrics. Jack Bowcock’s reputation in heating and plumbing could not have been bettered, or better earnt.

But even superior tradesmen and owners of recently renovated – and heated – houses are at the mercy of the ultimate suppliers of their fittings, and, yet more, of wind and weather.

* * *

‘... t’ere was an “ooooooo” in it,’ continued Niall, ‘wit’ overtones as’d chill t’e blood of any mortal man.’

Louis and Harry were hanging upon his every word.

So – in rather a different sense and for very different reasons – were Zayn and Liam. Who exchanged a positively incredulous look.

No ancient Peak farmhouse, whether in its native state or after Georgian improvement or upon the most modern refitting and renovation, could ever be made fully soundproof as a whole, although Liam and Zayn had supervised and carefully tested the project of making that portion of the old house which had been converted to a state of the art studio as near to soundproof as damn it.

And they knew already the quirks and quiddities of how vague sounds, otherwise recognisable at once, were baffled and transformed within the house to something unlike themselves.

And they knew of old another thing as well.

* * *

After luncheon (which – like brekker, Niall’s elevenses, Niall’s snacking and grazing, and Harry’s habit of turning anyone’s kitchen into his own and making a tuck-shop of it, given ten minutes in one place – had vexed Zayn mightily with its attendant conversational dwelling upon hauntings), Liam excused himself, leaving an unwilling and unamused Zayn to entertain their old friends and bandmates. When he came back withindoors, well before tea, tools cleaned and put away properly, and he cold-nipped and rubicund and invigorated by frost and Winter weather, he was suppressing a grin, one all compound equally of pride in himself and his work, and of amusement at the credulity of his mates.

‘That’s sorted,’ said he. Zayn couldn’t help but grin – not to say, _leer: –_ Liam, competent, a man of parts, good with his hands, was an infallible turn-on for Zayn.

‘Whaa....’ Harry’s look of Adorable Puzzlement seemed to be having a similar effect upon Tommo.

‘That bit o’ ice and sleet the other day,’ said Liam, cheerily, as Zayn chafed his cold hands and handed over a mug of tea one might have bathed in. ‘Split a bolt connector with the weight, so the hot … you’re not getting a bit of this, are you. Anyroadup, the electrics are put to rights: there’ll be no flickering of lights now, or heating cock-ups.’

Tommo simply stared.

‘An’ t’e keenin’ t’at was in it?’

Liam’s smile was blindingly full-on: the full apple-cheeked, eye-crinkling, nose-scrunching one. ‘That’ll sort itself tonight, just you wait.’

* * *

Just before midnight, Liam, and a Zayn kept from grumbling only by the prospect of mischief sufficient to justify missing out on a shag and a good night’s sleep in Liam’s arms, stole down the corridor and rapped on the door to Nialler’s bedroom.

‘What is it,’ asked Niall, looking (frankly) rumpled and adorable.

‘Showtime,’ grinned Liam.

The show, as Zayn and Liam predicted, was not long in kicking off. Very faintly, but audibly enough in the guest room they’d alloted Niall, a keening could be heard, a crooning mixed with gibbering like that of the sheeted dead, revenant.

‘Did I not tell y’ t’at –’

Zayn shushed Niall, not without a certain satisfaction; and Liam, with a finger to his lips enjoining stealth and silence, led them back up the corridor, towards the guest room they’d put Haz and Tommo up in. As they neared its door, the sounds resolved themselves into much more familiar ones: the countertenor, breathy moans of Louis in the throes of passion, and, in a much higher and more head-voiced pitch than he otherwise ever used, Haz’ gasping: not ‘ooooo’, but, ‘Looouuuuu’. Sounds all too familiar from a thousand hotels to the other three, who stood there for a very brief moment, Niall red as a glede and Zayn and Liam biting their lips to keep from laughing, before the three hastened away.

‘Been too long,’ giggled Zayn, once they were safely back at Niall’s door, ‘since you were on tour with ’em?’

‘Ah, feck _aff_ –’

Liam manfully suppressed his own giggles, and said, ‘It’s a trick of the acoustics in these old houses, Nialler....’

Niall blushed, if it were possible, yet more burningly.

‘And, Niall?’ Zayn was positively smirking. ‘The squeaking? Ignore that. Because you’ll be hearing it soon.’

‘I really _do_ need to beeswax the frame on that four-poster,’ mused Liam, with that handyman’s look in his eyes which moved Zayn irresistibly to drag him away to make it squeak again before Li could get sidetracked from the infinitely more important task of shagging Zayn through the duvet.

* * *

And so, some years later, to the arrival of the Haz-and-Tommo clan and of Nialler and his brood at the drinks-and-nibbles party at Bent Clough, and to Zayn’s sarky greeting which had caused Mr Batkin to declaim upon the law of property.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Zayn, as Liam hid his giggling in his shoulder. ‘Before you ask … the place isn’t haunted.’

Age had not withered nor custom staled the quality of Louis’ glares. All was well and as it ought to be, and another Bent Clough Christmas had begun.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas, you lot.


End file.
